Dots of light flew in the dim light before my eyes from the rotating disco ball in the ceiling above the dance floor and danced across the dirty walls and the worn floor. I could just sense the bass of the music pounding in my chest as AC/DC’s song Highway To Hell raged out of the sound system, the only new equipment in the place, as it stood out in relief against a backdrop of the outworn and outmoded accoutrement of the rest of the bar. Around the edge of the dance floor gut high, scarred, and dented wooden tables with patches of the finish worn off the tops punctuated the otherwise empty room. The stools around the tables stood largely empty and expectant awaiting the patrons that would not come. There might have been six people in attendance besides the staff in an establishment that could easily hold a hundred. The place smelled of cigarette smoke and stale beer. The walls were covered in pictures of rock superstars of a bygone era. The bar appeared long in decline and held a worn look of a place well past its heyday. In my youth I would have called the place a dive. Today I just called it a place to get cheap beer.
I stood alone hunched over a table in a corner of the room with the stool kicked back resting my elbows on the table top, a half full beer glass in my right hand. A near empty pitcher of beer stood on the table, paid for with monies from the living expense portion of a welfare check received and cashed earlier in the day. The glass cooled against my lips as I raised it up and took a swig, my gaze looking over the rim of the raised glass at the couple dancing in the center of the dance floor. Actually, it might be over generous to call what the couple was doing dancing, as they gyrated like tribal aboriginals in the Amazon rain forest at night hopping around a fire as if possessed; or, alternately, like puppets controlled by a spastic puppeteer. They were both clearly drunk and the girl was unsteady on her feet, but this didn’t curtail her as she wriggled and jiggled uninhibited upon the dance floor. Of the two, it was the girl that held my attention.
The titty fairy had provided this blond haired, thirty something, attractive lady with a pleasingly substantial endowment, though not overly so. Apparently, the titty fairy, about twelve inches tall with a two day growth of stubble on his face, unkempt hair, and a beer gut poking out from below an undersized and stained tee-shirt that bared his hairy, paunchy midriff, had, with an assumed pride of workmanship and desire to show off his handiwork, also the wit to return at some point in the evening to spike one of her drinks with a healthy helping of an I-Don’t-Care potion. The potion clearly having taken hold, she seemed to care not that as she danced her titties were engaged in an intermittent game of show-and-tell from beneath her shirt that was unbuttoned down to her navel. The display was augmented in its titillation by the fact that she was not wearing a bra. Why was she not wearing a bra? Maybe it was some feminist statement. She had a talisman on a chain around her neck, maybe she wore no bra because it was some arcane pagan religious rite by which she worshipped her Almighty and proved her true devotion. Maybe her peep show was an impassioned display of mystical religious fervor that lifted her closer to rapture, into that realm of spiritual enlightenment and bliss sanctified by the absence of a bra. Yes, maybe! Or maybe she just forgot to do the laundry. Just in case, I hastened to say a quick, silent prayer to whatever Almighty might be listening that her dancing continue. And so, she gyrated spastically on the dance floor seemingly oblivious to the fact she was giving a peep show, or at least she did not seem to care. I, on the other hand, did care. I cared a great deal. I cared enough to stare unabashedly at her display. Titties to a man are like squirrels to a dog: both easily distract us. And, yes, I am aware that I just compared men to dogs. Try not to read too much into it.
The show continued for a few more songs, at which point the music stopped, the house raised the lights, and the bar staff circulated through the bar yelling, “Time to go. Drink up.” I quickly quaffed the last mouthful of beer and, with a last, quick over-the-shoulder glance across the room at the girl now laughing and giggling in the arms of her male friend, and headed out the exit door at the front of the establishment into the wee hours of the morning.